Shinichi Kudo is shrunk to a small boy in the anime by the side effect of a poison, becoming Detective Conan. To keep his identity secret, he had to quickly come up with a new name. In the anime, two well-known authors help him with this – actually, there are three authors from whom Conan takes his name.
Which authors are they? In the anime, Conan can be seen looking at the bookshelf when asked questions by Ran. There, he notices two famous authors:
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- Edogawa Rampo
From these two names, he created his identity as Conan Edogawa. This way, the “Men in Black” cannot find him, the ones who administered the poison to the boy. Additionally, he protects his girlfriend Ran Mouri from becoming the target of the villains.
However, there is yet another author from whom Conan Edogawa’s name was inspired. Edogawa Rampo is actually just a pseudonym that refers to one of the first authors who dealt with detective stories.
The name is derived from Edgar Allan Poe. He is considered one of the founders of detective stories.
Detective Conan is not only available as an anime but also as a movie:
How is the name derived? Edogawa Rampo is Japanese and was born with the name Hirai Taro. He was probably looking for an artist’s name under which he could publish his works. He came up with the detective author Edgar Allan Poe, who is pronounced in Japanese as “Edogaa aran poo”.
Taro wanted to come up with a pseudonym that sounds similar, so he chose “Edogawa ranpo”. If you say both names aloud, you’ll notice that they sound alike.
Thus, Conan Edogawa is not only based on two but on three authors of detective stories.
The manga artist of Detective Conan is still coming up with new cases for the little detective. However, 27 years ago, the manga was almost finished. Gosho Aoyama, the creator of Detective Conan, gave two reasons for the near-cancellation: Detective Conan has more than 1000 manga chapters today – The creator almost ended the series out of anger 27 years ago
